


Multiverse Theory for Thieves and Liars

by 17603



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Existential Dread, Fix-It of Sorts, Human Disaster Freddy Newandyke, M/M, Mutual Disdain to Lovers, POV Second Person, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21925375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17603/pseuds/17603
Summary: The second time you wake up, hands flying to your face and stomach to check for bullet holes, you pretend you don't remember.
Relationships: Mr. Orange/Mr. Pink (Reservoir Dogs), Mr. Orange/Mr. White (Reservoir Dogs)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 133





	Multiverse Theory for Thieves and Liars

The first time it happens, you wake up in your own bed, panting from taking a bullet in the face. You write it off as a dream, you're nervous and this wouldn't be the first time you dreamt about an op going wrong at work. It can all be passed off as deja vu until you get shot and Mr White tells you his name is Larry.

Dread blooms in your chest like blood on your shirtfront. It goes pretty much the same way though.

The second time you wake up, hands flying to your face and stomach to check for bullet holes, you pretend you don't remember.

You remember that Larry holds you even after you tell him.

The third, fourth, fifth and sixth times, you mostly spend feeling sorry for yourself. You always thought you'd be braver if you got shot and it's humbling to realise that you aren't brave at all. Larry tells you that you are though, holds you while you die.

You really don't want to die.

Around the tenth time, you lose count. You live in a few hours between waking up with your heart pounding and feeling the shift of the trigger catching against your cheek, and for a while you just let it play out, march your steps, wondering if this is hell.

Eventually, you start to make changes.

Just small at first, like ordering something different for breakfast, or answering questions differently. You usually rat out Pink for not tipping because that's a fucking dick move, but the novelty of wears off and you start chucking an extra buck in on the tips instead.

You haven't really been listening to his speech for weeks (is that the right way to measure time when it's just the same day over and over?) and the second time you do it, he gives you a look. The third time, he says "one" quietly in your ear as he walks past. You get shot in the stomach, bleed mostly to death in the arms of the man you have fallen for and are shot the rest of the way, then amuse yourself by saying "two" in his ear the next day because you feel like you should keep count somehow. He ignores you. He ignores "three" as well, or maybe doesn't hear - you don't remember to say it until he's leaning over you in the warehouse asking if it's bad (as opposed to good).

When you say "four" (walking across the carpark into the diner), he turns sharply and you know you're not the only one.

He spends all of breakfast watching you, and makes sure you see him pull a few crumpled singles out of his pocket and throw them in the tip pile.

Things go bad. You get shot. You shoot the lady dead and yell and thrash and squeeze Larry's hand so tight it must hurt. Pink shows up and argues (half-heartedly), gets knocked down. It's all about the same until Mr Blonde invites everyone out to his car.

Pink doesn't go. You wonder if he's going to shoot you. Larry's clearly wondering too, because he takes the safety off your gun. Usually he doesn't do that til you're left alone with Mr Blonde.

"We're repeating the last twenty four hours," Pink says. You're lying on the ramp and he's sitting next to you, knees drawn up to his chest and his own gun dangling from his fingers. His mouth can't seem to decide if it wants to sneer or frown, and his face keeps twisting.

"I'm not," you say, "I'm only repeating eight hours."

He narrows his eyes at you.

So you elaborate: "I wake up, we go to the diner, hear about Madonna's dick, you're a dick, I get shot, we come here, 'Stuck in the Middle with You' plays, I die, I wake up eight hours ago and do it again."

"Yeah well, I get shot by the fucking cops - thanks for organising that, by the way - and I'm suddenly back in my apartment twenty four hours ago, standing in the fucking shower."

You're breathing heavily and you can't quite seem to fill your lungs enough, but this makes you laugh; the idea of one minute you're getting shot in a suit and tie and the next you're naked and holding the shampoo. Later, one of the times you're holding him and his eyes are just so scared, you try to make him laugh and wonder if that was his intention. Larry tries to make you laugh too, and you do just for the relief that washes over his face.

If you can laugh, it isn't so bad.

"What were you doing yesterday around three o'clock?"

Oh.

You're not sure there's enough blood in your body left to turn your face red, because at half past two you jerked off and then fell into exhausted, overwrought sleep. At least you weren't jerking off at three, you suppose, because going from getting a bullet in the face to, well, that...the  _ least _ it'd do is ruin jerking off for you and there goes most of your sex life.

He's smiling now, thin and genuine with a sliver of teeth, so god knows what your face is doing - you're only half in control of your body at this point, hands contorting and legs kicking slow and useless as you shift your hips and try and find a position that doesn't hurt so fucking much. "Where do you live? I'll come wake you up."

You tell him, you die, and you wake up - not in thin lemon-yellow light to  _ stand in the place where you live, now face north _ (which you fucking hate), but in warm golden afternoon sun to someone drumming on your front door. It's Pink. It's half past three and his hair's still damp, ends curling around his ears. Your time spent alive has almost tripled.

You need to sit down, and you're pleased to note that he looks just as shaken by the recognition in your eyes.

If he'd have showed up like this the first time, you would have panicked.

Now it's different.

  
  


Some things stay the same. Someone always gets shot, usually it's you and you know how to deal with that, but once it's Larry and he's still the one telling you to be brave. You cry when you tell him, but you can never bring yourself not to, in case this time it's for real.

"Every time is for real," Pink says, "or none of them are."

This is some Alice in Wonderland shit and you don't like it, and you tell him this while you're both sitting on your couch. He usually looks sarcastic or annoyed, but today he just looks tired and sad. You wonder what life he has outside these twenty four hours that he's missing. Just because you don't have much doesn't mean everyone else is the same.

  
  


Larry almost always holds you at the end. You clutch at his arms and hope he'll kiss you, but he never does. You wish you'd kissed him earlier, weeks ago, but you're just that little bit unsure. What if you're reading it wrong, what if, what if. It seems stupid now that you know how it's going to end. What if you just did it now?

You won't. It feels creepy, fake, like you're only taking a risk when you know you can undo it. If it turns out to be a mistake you want it to leave a scar, not wipe clean.

But what if.

Larry almost always shoots you too, which doesn't seem like it should get less awful but...it kinda does. It's becoming peaceful. You confess, hands on your face and lips almost on your forehead like benediction, you get shot, you wake up and try again. One time you get careless, confident in the script's ability to play out, and Blonde shoots you first. Pink is holding you; that alone should have been enough of a warning that the script doesn't matter, because the tense angry man you met however many versions of this ago would never sit in a puddle of your blood with his arms around you.

You wouldn't have found it comforting if he did back then. Now you do.

Change is limited, but it happens.

  
  


Usually you snap awake to pounding on your door, but this time when reality swims into focus, you are being fiercely embraced. Water drips down your cheek and trickles into your ears, fingers curve around the back of your head and someone takes heaving breaths into the crook of your neck.

"Oh fuck you're okay," Pink wheezes, "He shot you in the fucking face, I was fucking holding you and then your brains were all over me, he fucking shot you."

Of course. You've been shot in the face more times than you can count and you never remember it anyway. He's just woken up under the water, skin wet with bloody memory, and driven all the way here because somehow, despite the fact that this has happened before, he needs to check you are alive, you're okay, you didn't die permanently in his arms.

"I'm fine," you tell him, and you rub his back and reassure him you never feel the bullet until he calms down enough to let go. He's kneeling against your bed with his head resting on his folded arms, hair soaking wet and shirt half buttoned, and he just looks so fucking relieved.

You want to know how he got in, because the door's always been locked before. That's how it goes. The knocking wakes you, you turn the deadbolt for him. Every time. He gives you a shifty look that turns sheepish and apologises for breaking your kitchen window.

"You'd better fix it," you reply automatically, and he gives you a look, lip curling at odds with his eyes.

"If it's still there tomorrow, I'll make you a new one out of diamonds."

"Dick," you say, and punch him gently in the arm. "There's a spare key under the dead plant in the hallway. For next time."

He doesn't quite smile, but the next day he lets himself in and you wake up to a hand on your arm.

This is when you truly start to think of him as real.

  
  


Every time now, Pink follows you and Larry to the car. Sometimes he drives and Larry sits in the back and holds you, sometimes it's the other way around. You still writhe and yell, but it's better when you aren't alone. Pink puts pressure on the wound. Larry strokes your hair and whispers his name in your ear.

The first time Pink shoves you out of the way and takes the bullet that's had your name on it for as long as you can remember, you just stand there and stare at him. Larry shakes you back to surreality and it's your turn to hold someone while they slowly die.

"Why'd you do that?" You hiss. He's still and quiet, exactly how you wish you could be, and he touches your face with one bloody hand while your heart hammers in your chest, against his back. "Why'd you get shot?"

He gives you a tiny smile. "Thought you could use a break."

You follow Larry to the sinks and let him light your cigarette and mention hospitals. He doesn't really care, he just wants to know if you're all right. You shoot Blonde and sit with Pink's head lolling over your arm and confess to your lie. Larry, last man standing, last one not shot, stands behind you and you're glad Pink is too far gone to know when the gun on the back of your head blows your mind backwards twenty four hours and your brains probably all over him.

Not for the first time, you wonder if somewhere (somewhen?) Larry is waking up, touching his own face and wondering if this time, it'll stick. You try counting at him, but he never gives any sign of recognition.

  
  


Some things you always do; you always save Marvin, if you can. You don't especially like him, but you save his life. Sometimes you also save his ear. Once you shot the radio - you laugh about it later. Blonde shot you, but the look on his face was worth it.

After your untimely death, Pink explains, Larry went spare. He shot Blonde, shot Marvin, shot Eddie and Joe too.

"How did you die?" It's not as callous a question as it seems. Pink runs the gamut; sometimes he runs out and gets shot by the cops, sometimes he gets shot by Blonde, sometimes he goes down in that stupid final firefight. Once, he pushed Larry too hard and died sitting on the floor, back early in the day when it was just the three of you in the warehouse.

Usually, he doesn't mind. This time, he drops his face into his hands. "I told him."

"You what?"

"I told White I was the cop. He shot me."

You're not sure how you feel about this, so you keep quiet. They taught you that at the academy; if there's silence, people will feel they have to fill it, especially guilty people. You don't know how well it works, you've never done it, but the theory seems sound.

"You were already dead," Pink shrugs, "he woulda thought I was trying to cover my own ass if I blamed you."

Larry died believing the best of you, but it was a lie. He won't remember, but you do. You always tell him, you always hope it will end differently but you know it won't. You can't bear to lie to him, not even to save your own skin.

You don't want to die at twenty six, but more than that, you want to be known.

  
  


Some things you often do; the lady whose car you steal only dies about one in ten times now. You've convinced Pink to punch her. He's hilariously uncomfortable with this until you point out that it's better than being shot, and you don't mention that it happened because you forgot you weren't a real criminal as soon as Larry's hand settled between your shoulderblades. The first time he does it, you wonder if that'll break the loop, saving an innocent (she  _ fucking shot you _ ) life or whatever. It doesn't, but you feel better.

You knock her down when it's not you lying on the bitumen, and sometimes she fires at you again as you drive away. Every time you try to steal a different car, you get shot by the cops, every time you try and turn down a different street, Larry catches your elbow.

One time you grab Larry' hand while you're running down that alleyway. It doesn't change anything, but you didn't expect it to.

  
  


A few times after that, Pink stomps into your apartment and announces that you're going to do nothing.

"We spend the day here, the heist never happens, tomorrow is an actual new day."

"And Joe Cabot kills us both?"

He deflates a bit, but honestly, it's worth a try, and you tell him so.

"Plus, you can sleep in," he adds, sly smile creeping up his narrow face as a blush rises up yours. He knows you well enough to tease you now, you're both comfortable leaning on the narrow counter that makes up your entire kitchen, he's perfectly at ease digging through your fridge and drinking the last of the orange juice, then complaining about how you never buy more, as if you could have.  _ Sorry, just stepping out of the timestream to get groceries. _

He laughs when you voice this, and it's the choppy startled laugh. The real one. You like it. You're starting to- no, you're not.

You know a lot about each other. Not personal details like where you grew up or why you're a cop instead of a comic book artist (or why he's a criminal instead of doing something tragically nerdy like teaching philosophy at UCLA), not more than snatches of stories that slip out when you aren't paying close enough attention, but you can read him and he can definitely read you. You recognise his footsteps, the way his hands move when he talks, the little hesitations and held breaths and carefully chosen words that hide something.

You don't know quite what they hide, just that they do.

Neither of you know each other's names either. You're hoping that Larry will be the first one you tell, and you know that if you want to know Pink's name, you'll need to tell him yours first. It's like one of those irritating riddles, something about a fox and a goose and a bag of wheat, because the one thing that never changes is that Larry shoots you as soon as you tell him. You never get the chance to tell him your name.

No one has called you Freddy for a long time.

The next morning, you both lie on your bed and watch dawn light fade the room up from greyscale to colour. Neither of you have slept; you've talked the idea to death, over pizza, over dry cereal, over chlorine-bitter tap water, for the past fifteen hours and your throat is raw and soft. You feel like you have been peeled, your eyes burn. Around the time when you should be sitting at the table fighting over stupid bullshit with everyone else, his hand slides across the covers and clasps yours.

Your fingers lace together. The phone rings multiple times and you both ignore it. One of you is trembling, but you don't want to let go in case it turns out it's you. You fall asleep and wake up in the same spot but different clothes, empty-handed and alone on the same day with your alarm going off. It didn't work. You didn't expect it to, but disappointment still stings.

Pink didn't come wake you up either; you've slept for a full sixteen hours and need to hurry if you want to make it. For some reason you feel even more awful than usual, like you've been abandoned.

Maybe it's a sign that today is the last day (it isn't).

You see patterns everywhere now, in missing tiles and burned out streetlights, you count things in your head and wonder if they're signs. They never are.

Pink doesn't look at you over breakfast, but he doesn't let you get shot either, so you hold him until you're dead and it's all starting again, this time at twenty five past three with his hand on your chest.

He's sorry he didn't come wake you up. You tell him it's okay. He says he needed some space. You keep telling him it's okay. It isn't really, you don't want to go back to sleeping through two thirds of your existence, just the thought of it makes your chest tight with panic, but he doesn't owe you anything. This is probably all your fault and you're in no position to make requests.

"It's okay," you say again but you both know you're lying, you're rattled, so he drives you out to Santa Monica and you sit on the beach with a bottle of terrible gin and a transistor radio, get way too drunk listening to the all-night no-ads public access programming and take a taxi to the diner the next morning, covered in sand. The transistor got thrown into the surf just before dawn for playing too much shit music - you could have changed the station, but it was pretty funny and it'll be back on your kitchen table in nine hours anyway.

"I hope this fucking loops," he says, arm around your shoulders in the back of the cab, "because I don't remember where I left my car. Or my keys."

"It'll be okay," you tell him, "if we get a tomorrow, I'll help you look."

He rests his cheek in your hair, just for a moment. "I'm sorry."

It isn't about the keys. You press against his side. "It's okay."

Maybe it will be. You count red lights and wonder if this is a turning point (it isn't).

Pink keeps a tally, he can hold the numbers in his head somehow while they pour out of yours like sand. You don't want to know how many times you've done this, but he says he'll tell you the grand total when you're free. You're hoping he'll forget. Neither of you acknowledge that you might also end up dead.

Sometimes you wonder if you already are.

  
  
  


There are a few things you try once, like driving out of LA into the desert. There are a few things you try more than once, like calling Holdaway. It's hard to balance between explaining enough that he takes you seriously and not explaining enough that he thinks you're crazy. It never works, and you realise how little faith everyone has in you.

You don't have much faith in yourself, so you count seconds and catalogue the different tones of voice and look for a sign as to who you're supposed to give the secret password to in order to stop this. You thought it might be Larry. Now you think it might be yourself.

Some signs you miss.

Usually you spend the night talking and writing up lists and trying to solve whatever puzzle this is. Sometimes you get blind drunk and show up for the heist red-eyed and glue-mouthed, barely functional. It never matters. One time, he crawls into your bed and tugs your arm around his shoulders.

"What the fuck, Pink," you mumble, because, well, what the fuck? He usually sleeps on your uncomfortable couch, or doesn't sleep at all.

"That's not my fucking name," he croaks, and you roll over and hold him properly, stroke his hair and dig your fingertips into his back until you both drift off. When the alarm goes, he's curled behind you with an arm over your waist and you don't want to move. He mustn't either, because he doesn't even though you know he's awake. You've been touched more on this one awful repeating day than you have in the past year, but it's all washed through with blood and panic. The hand on your bare stomach isn't trying to keep you alive, it's just there. And you like it.

  
  


You're each sitting on opposite ends of your couch, knees drawn up and facing each other when he lowers the comic he's reading and asks "what didn't you do that you wish you did?"

That's easy. "Told Larry."

"I'm assuming you mean told him about your crush."

You kick him. "Ha ha, fuck you."

He shrugs and keeps flipping through one of your Iron Man back-issues. "You know where he lives? Got his phone number?"

"Yeah. I have his number."

"So call him."

He keeps kicking you and mouthing "call him" until you give up and do it. Larry sounds pleased, like there is no one he'd rather talk to on the eve of a doomed jewellery store robbery than the dumb junior criminal he met a few weeks ago. It occurs to you that this is because for him, you have spent the last few weeks together, slowly stepping closer to something, and you're making the move he couldn't. He hasn't shot you in the face hundreds of times, hasn't held your hand while you cried like a scared kid, hasn't learned the truth about you yet.

You're feeling the distance.

When he picks you up outside your apartment in his old black Lincoln, you wonder if Pink is watching out the window. Bringing your suit seemed presumptuous, maybe he's just gonna have a drink with you and give you a pep talk, drop you home by midnight so you get a good night's sleep before the big armed robbery, but you're glad you did as soon as you're sitting in the passenger seat, because he smiles at you real slow and his hand's on your knee by the end of the street. You smile back and let your hair fall in your face and put a tentative hand on his thigh. He's wearing jeans, old and soft but still snug. You've had a lot of fantasies that start like this.

You might have jerked off to something like this before you fell asleep and into a time loop.

His place is in one of those by-the-week apartment buildings you can see into from the freeway, but it's decent inside and he's got a bottle of nice bourbon. Within half an hour you're lying across his lap on the couch and he's telling you what a good boy you are in between kisses, peeling off your shirt and rubbing your legs through your jeans. You straddle him and he says "look at you, kid," leaning back, obvious pleasure and almost-wonder in his voice, "look at you."

You know you've gone bright red, you can't help looking down, your shoulders hunch forward and he tilts your chin up with two fingers. The gentleness in his eyes is only made bearable by the hunger.

He chuckles when you pull his plain white t-shirt over his head, rests big warm hands on your waist and kisses his way down your ribs, lifting you so he can grab your ass with both hands. He's tan where you're pale, filled-out where you're gangly, old green tattoos blur on his skin, and even though you're the same height you feel small.

The first time around, this would have been bulletproof. Now, it's really good, but the taste it leaves in your mouth is bittersweet and you can't help but feel a little like you're playing a part.

When you're being pinned down on the bed, you stop thinking about it and decide to just enjoy it.

You are mostly successful.

Afterwards, Larry holds you and you rest your head on his bare chest, your hair brushing his cheek and his warm breath on your scalp. "You worried about tomorrow?"

You nod and whisper "yeah" and he kisses the top of your head, hugs you tighter. 

"You'll be okay, kid," he says, "stick close, yeah?"

You wonder if Pink stayed at your place or went back to his own. You wonder if this will break the loop. You wonder if you should have told Larry who you were before you let him kiss you.

  
  


In the morning, he fixes the mess you made of your tie and slicks back your hair with capable hands. You wonder how many other boyish thieves he's kissed on the mouth and told not to worry, they'll be fine, he's watching out for them. You want desperately to be reassured, to feel safe, but the doubt gnawing in your stomach has nothing really to do with the time loop and everything to do with the fact that you are not a thief: you're just a liar.

This time around is the closest you come to replicating the first time, except when you're gutshot and writhing, he kisses your forehead.

Except when you tell him, he shoves you away, and the last thing to touch you is the muzzle of his gun, right between your eyes.

  
  


This yesterday you wake up to the phone, stumble out to grab it and slur a sticky-mouthed greeting. It's ten past three, the earliest you've been awake.

"Hey," Pink says, "you awake?"

Obviously you are, if you're answering the phone. "Yeah."

"All right then," he says after a long silence. "I'll leave you to it."

"What?" The fog is starting to lift, it must be to do with how early it is because you're usually more alert, but you have no idea what's going on. "Leave me to what?"

There is another long silence, and dots start to join up in your head.

"I'm not doing it again," you tell him, your voice catches and your face burns and you're glad you're alone. "I can't do it again. I shouldn't have even done it once." You're a fucking idiot to think that a night of your mediocre charms would do anything but make it worse. "Just forget it."

"Yeah," he says, and you both hang up.

You're lying on your bed, on your side with your hands between your drawn-up knees, watching the trickle of time on your digital clock, when you hear the front door creak open and click closed. The bed dips behind you and a body curls around yours, and neither of you move for a long time.

Eventually he says "do you wanna go get some tacos?"

  
  


The heist turns into just another part of your day. You go to work, die, Pink comes over and you wake up, eat, hang out, maybe go somewhere but often don't, fall asleep together in your bed and wake up to the same song on the clock radio,  _ stand in the place where you live _ . Go to work, die, wake up. You live in the late afternoon and into the night. You see more of LA than you have in a while, all after sunset, kinda like you're vampires, kinda like The Lost Boys. You wake up next to someone, sometimes with their breath on your skin, shorthand in your conversations, the two of you against the world, but you feel like you've skipped a lot of steps in there.

They might be steps you want to retrace to, but you're not sure how.

More and more, you look at Pink; you look at his hairless chest where his shirt gaps and look for the angles of thin legs in his loose jeans, you watch him laugh on your couch and you watch him die on the warehouse floor and you watch him without realising he is watching you as well.

One night, you burn down the warehouse. It's a mad impulse, but you're both swinging wildly when you swing at all now. You've ridden out some hare-brained schemes together and always woken up, though occasionally even that's a relief because it turns out you  _ absolutely can _ make things worse. The heist is the least important part of your day now, the people around you feel like barely more than shadows and Larry's hands on your face only make you sad because you know how it'll always end, but what you do after you die is real. Pink is real, hair sticking to his forehead and blue eyes glinting orange as the fire builds, and you're both laughing like you kinda can't believe you're doing this. Like you've gone fucking crazy at last. Maybe you have, maybe it's just crazy it took this long, and the laughter dies when you glance over and see him glancing back.

His hand smells of petrol when he touches your cheek. It's not a great kiss, but the next one is better. You haven't thought about kissing Larry for a while now, and you feel strangely guilty, like this is a betrayal.

There's a poem you recall from highschool English, just a few lines really:  _ some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. _ You press together in your bed and kiss, hot-mouthed and fully clothed, ignore the alarm, ignore the phone, wake up reckless the next yesterday and saunter through that fuckup of a robbery together, treat it like a game until you watch him die and remember that you don't know where the game ends. You don't want it to end here. Larry rubs your neck and howls at your betrayal and when the muzzle of the gun presses to your jaw, the following line  _ from what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire _ echoes in your head instead of the gunshot.

  
  


You both start to tell each other more. He knows why you became a cop (you were lost, you wanted to be a hero) and you know he's never killed anyone (shot, yes) before now. You tell him about the jerking off thing and he laughs. You jerk each other off and he tells you what he presents as a funny story about the first time he did this and you laugh awkwardly then immediately wish you didn't because it's actually fucking awful. You stroke his hair and kiss and mostly don't think about Larry. He pushes you against your kitchen counter and sucks your dick, so you pin him down on the couch and return the favour. Sometimes you fight, sometimes you're rude to each other, sometimes he wakes you up and then leaves again, but he always wakes you up. Sometimes you lie in bed and run your hands over each others' skin. He's lanky and pale and more scarred than you expected, but also gentler.

You realise that you know him.

You realise that you like him.

  
  


It goes wrong every time, but one time it goes wrongest of all. The dust settles. You're the only one left alive. Your backup, your coworkers, will be kicking in the door at any second. They're not going to shoot you.

This could be the end of the day.

Except.

There's a body lying heavy in your lap, eyes empty and limbs slack, and this isn't the ending you want.

You know how you can fix it.

Before you can chicken out, you put the barrel of the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger.

When you wake up yesterday in your own bed, you're almost dizzy with relief. You tell Pink that a cop shot you - it's technically true, even though you haven't felt like a cop for a long time now - and burrow gratefully into his arms. He kisses your forehead absently, carelessly, and you don't tell him that you felt the bullet this time.

  
  


You don't tell him your name, but you now know that you want to. You need to do it before this happens again and blowing your own brains out doesn't fix it, because the gut instinct that got you made detective is telling you that it will, that something is going to happen. You spend three days wracked with uncertainty with your last secret on the tip of your tongue, terrified that you might be missing your chance.

In the end, you tell him when you're both lying in bed, your back to his chest. He doesn't move or say anything for a while, then he kisses the spot just under where your spine joins your skull and says "get some sleep, Freddy."

You fall asleep with a dumb grin on your face and the dumb terror of your own mortality trickling down the inside of your ribs like ice water. You haven't been afraid of death for a long time, you haven't really felt alive.

  
  


After all the times you woke up looking for some indication that this version of today will be different, it's jarring when you get one. It's also stupid.

The part of the song you wake up to in the morning is wrong. It's been  _ stand in the place where you live, now face north  _ for the past god knows how long, but now you snap alert to  _ stand in the place where you are, stand in the place where you are _ and you just know. You shake Pink and he mumbles something, tries to sling an arm over you but you're kicking off the covers and jumping for the clock radio. It's exactly the right time, but it's the wrong part of the song: it's the very end, not the first chorus.

Something is going to happen.

You tie Pink's tie for him and tell him it will be all right, because you remember the morning when Larry cared for you, and you never had the conviction to be on the other side until now. He doesn't fully believe that this is the last time; you've been convinced of it before and it's always ended in just beginning again, but he always takes it seriously. He listens when you talk about signs - he might not agree, but he listens.

He always takes you seriously when it matters and you are always grateful.

You slide the knot up under his collar and he trusts you. That's more terrifying than getting shot, and you can't scream and cry about it.

  
  


Neither of you fuck around today - Larry's arm rests over the back of your chair at breakfast, you hear about Madonna and dick for what feels like the millionth time, you can hardly eat, Pink tips and then picks a petty fight with Joe over something else - and you feel like a secret agent every time you catch his eye. The robbery goes to shit, of course, and you all scatter. Brown gets blood in his eyes and you and Larry end up in the same side street, stealing the same goddamn car, and you're too busy looking around for Pink because you haven't seen him since you all sauntered into that mess, so you aren't the one opening the car door. You manage to yell at him to look out though (maybe unnecessarily), and the bullet only goes into his shoulder.

He shrugs it off like it's a bee sting and cracks her in the face with the butt of his gun, mutters something angry and flings himself into the driver's seat. When you clamber in on the other side, he grins.

"She'll be fine, kid," he says, "I only kill cops."

The drive to the warehouse is bizarre; he realises he can't change gears with his right hand so you sit next to him on the bench seat and do it with your left. There's no muscle memory to help out and sometimes he's slow off the mark telling you what to change to, so you grind the gears and he rides the clutch and the only good thing is that it's so nerve-wracking that you don't worry about Pink for fifteen or so minutes. You downshift too quick when he pulls up outside the warehouse and the engine screams before it cuts off, but you're first there and more or less on time.

Waiting goes a lot slower when it's not you who's bleeding profusely. Larry's not too bothered by it though, he winces a bit but tells you "this ain't the first time I've been shot."

You can't help the little bubble of hysterical laughter that rises up, because wow, it sure isn't.

  
  


You're just starting to get nervous when someone else pulls up outside. Larry reaches inside his jacket, lets a hand rest on his gun. You watch him out of the corner of your eye while you both stare at the door.

Pink staggers in, clutching his ribs. He's lost his tie, his lip is split, and he's bloody all over. You run to help him, lower him down and peer under his jacket. It's not a bullet hole he's bleeding from. You were a cop long enough to recognise stab wounds, and you've known him long enough that he gives you a shaky smile when you squeeze his hand. You don't know how serious it is. You don't know. You don't.

But someone always dies on that fucking ramp.

"Is it bad?" Larry asks, peering over you both.

You look up. "As opposed to good?"

"What the fuck happened?"

"Blonde's dead," Pink says, which maybe explains what happened to him vis a vis the bloody face and bloody chest and, you can see now, bloody knuckles, but it doesn't really cover anything else.

"How?" Larry looks surprised and you wonder (not for the first time) if he knew Vic Vega, even just by reputation. "How's he dead and you're not?"

"I'm a fucking professional," Pink mumbles.

You add: "some guys just aren't lucky."

Larry swears and stomps off to the other room, so you wriggle out from under Pink's shoulders and follow him.

"I'll be just through that door," you say, even though he didn't ask. "I'll be right back."

  
  


It always comes down to you three.

  
  


"Someone fucking knew about this," Larry says, leaning over the sink, and that's your cue.

"Yeah," you tell him. "They did."

If there was any doubt that this was the last time,  _ stand in the place where you are _ , it's gone now.

Larry's standing in front of you, broad and solid and close enough to touch, and you're sure he'll remember this because you're sure time is moving forwards again. This will not wipe clean.

"I was the rat," you say, and grab his arms before he can grab his gun. Either gun.

He stands there staring at you, and you force yourself to stare back instead of glancing away from the awful raw pain in his face. His wrists flex in your grip but he doesn't struggle. You wouldn't have a chance if he did, he's strong. He's carried you so many times and he doesn't even remember.

You cup his cheek and kiss him on the mouth. His arms come up around you, like the car but better, like the warehouse but better, like the night and the morning after he doesn't remember, one hand on your shoulder and the other gently cradling the back of your skull.

This will leave a scar.

"I'm a cop," you tell him when he pulls back, "I'm so fucking sorry Larry, I'm a cop. I'm so sorry. My name is Freddy Newandyke and I was a detective with the LAPD and I'm sorry."

This time, he pulls you close and buries his face in your neck. You're both breathing like you've run a marathon and your hands spasm open and closed at your sides before sliding up his back.

"I'm sorry," you say again. He strokes your hair, just once, and gently squeezes your ribs.

"I'm sorry too, kid."

You aren't surprised when you feel the click reverberate behind your ear, bone conducting sound better than air ever could, and you shut your eyes.

You are surprised when the bang knocks him forward against you and his gun clatters on the concrete and bounces out of sight.

He's dead before you see his face (thank god), bullet in the back, almost instant kill. He probably didn't even feel it. You lower his body, unsteady and clumsy because you're not strong and he's a dead weight, he died in your arms and you cradle his shoulders down to the concrete and smooth back his hair. He doesn't feel it, the last thing he felt was a bullet in the back while you held him.

You don't know what you feel.

  
  


Pink slides down the wall, gun clutched in one red-smeared hand.

You stare at each other.

"It's been almost three years," his suit jacket's hanging open, legs kicked out long and awkward in front of him. He's covered in blood; his own. So are you; Larry's.

"You shot him."

"I'm a terrible person," Pink says dully. "You know that."

"You saved my life."

He looks up at you. By the calendar, you met less than a month ago, spent a grand total of a few hours together, and you don't even know his name. "I thought I was gonna miss and kill you."

You kneel between his legs. By your memories, you know him better than you've ever known anyone. "You didn't."

He holds up both hands, they're shaking violently. His teeth are chattering too. "I nearly did."

You press his hands together between your own. "But you didn't."

  
  


Like a film in rewind, you half-carry him out of the warehouse and drop him into the back of the stolen car where you once (many times) lay and bled and screamed. He tells you an address for someone who can fix things and you don't quite understand everything he's saying, but time's running short enough as it is so you buckle up and tear out.

"You're not gonna fucken die," you tell him, sitting in the front seat, right arm twisting over your own shoulder to hold his hand. You're both almost laughing, edged with hysteria.

"You're gonna be okay," you yell, "say it!"

"I'm gonna be okay, Freddy," he yells back. It's the second time he's used your name and you think it'll be a long time before you get sick of it.

"You're gonna be okay," you repeat, hesitate on the end because you don't want to call him Pink any more, but you also don't want to ask in case he doesn't tell you.

He squeezes your hand as you drive too fast down back streets.

You're not dead.

He tells you his name.

You could die, but you're not dead yet.

Time moves forward.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Stand' by REM  
> 'Fire and Ice' by Robert Frost


End file.
